Callum stops walking. We're at the steps of Bellamy Hall, grey stone and choking ivy, and he finally turns to look at me. His eyes are ice-blue and completely unreadable.
"What happened," he says slowly, like he's explaining something to a particularly dim child, "is that you swallowed a shadow spell that should have torn you apart. You pulled death magic into yourself like—like drinking water, likebreathing, and you'restanding here asking questions instead of bleeding from your eyes."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one you're getting." He releases my arm—finally—and takes a step back. "Go to your room. Stay there. Don't talk to anyone about what happened until you hear from the administration."
"And if I don't?"
Something flickers across his face. That crack in the mask again, there and gone so fast I almost miss it. "Then you'll make things significantly worse for yourself. And for everyone else."
He's already turning away, phone back in his hand, dismissing me like I'm nothing. Like I'm a problem he's solved, a task he's completed, a box he's checked off some invisible list.
"Callum."
He pauses. Doesn't turn around.
"You're scared of me." I don't know why I say it. Maybe because I'm tired of being the only one who's afraid. "I saw it. In there. When the shadow went into me—you were terrified."
A long moment of silence. The wind picks up, stirring dead leaves across the path, and somewhere in the distance a bell is ringing—the same bell that marks the hour, the same bell I've heard every day since I got here, but it sounds different now. Darker. Heavier.
"Go to your room, Miss Grey." His voice is quiet. Controlled. But there's something underneath it that wasn't there before — a thread of something that might be exhaustion, or resignation, or something else entirely. "This isn't over."
He walks away without looking back.
I sit on my bed for a long time after that.
The sphere is warm against my palm, its four colors swirling faster than I've ever seen them. Shadow and lightning and blood-red and chaos-purple, pressing against the cracked glass like they're trying to break free.
There's something new inside me now. Something cold and old and hungry, curled up behind my ribs like it's been waiting there all along. When I close my eyes, I can feel shadows — not see them,feelthem, the way you feel warmth from a fire or cold from an open window. They're everywhere. In the corners of the room. Under the bed. In the spaces between heartbeats.
They're whispering to me. I don't know what they're saying yet.
But I'm starting to think I'm going to find out.
Chapter 8: Callum
The walk to the Administration building takes seven minutes if I cut through the east garden. I've timed it. I time most things—it helps to know exactly how long you have before you need to be somewhere, what you can fit into the gaps, how to arrange the hours so nothing is wasted.
The shadows under the old oaks reach toward me as I pass. They always do. Most Mors students learn to ignore it, the way their magic pulls at darkness like a magnet, but I've never minded. Shadows are honest. They don't pretend to be anything other than what they are.
I adjust my cuffs. Straighten my collar. Check the line of my blazer in the reflection of a window as I pass. Everything in its place.
Mother's office is on the third floor, corner suite, windows overlooking the main quad so she can watch the students cross between classes. She says it helps her stay connected to the pulse of campus life. I think she just likes watching.
Her assistant—a nervous Tumult woman who's been here longer than I've been alive—waves me through without announcement. Expected, then. She knew I was coming before I texted.
She always knows.
The office is exactly as it always is: immaculate, elegant, suffocating.
White walls, white furniture, white orchids in a crystal vase that catch the afternoon light and throw small rainbows across the ceiling. The desk is glass and chrome, bare except for a slimlaptop and a single fountain pen aligned precisely parallel to the edge. No papers. No clutter. Nothing out of place.
Mother stands at the window with her back to me, platinum hair swept into a smooth twist at the base of her neck. Her suit is cream-colored, tailored so precisely it might have been sewn directly onto her body. She doesn't turn when I enter.
"Close the door, Callum."
I close it. The click of the latch sounds very loud in the silence.
